Top tips for public sector commissioners

Posted on Friday 29th June 2012

In a recent article which appeared in the Guardian Professional, HSMC's Jon Glasby believes too little is being done to turn commissioning into a career of choice for future public service leaders: "If you are a young, bright, aspirational 18-year-old, what is there out there to make commissioning attractive?"

If you work in local government, you may be there because of your expertise in social care, housing or planning. What you might not have expected when you went for your job interview is that you'd be commissioning services in what seems like a constantly evolving landscape of public service delivery.

From personalisation to the abolition of PCTs, recent years have seen a series of major changes to the way public services are commissioned and delivered. Changing structures combined with reduced budgets have created new challenges for commissioners involved in improving and redesigning services – and involved many others in commissioning for the first time.